Glasgow

Top 10 meetup hub with over 12k tech members

£1.05 bnDigital tech business turnover
(2017)

BalancedDominant distribution of businesses by age (2017)

£104 kDigital tech turnover by employee (2017)

156Digital tech business births (2016)

£1.31 bnGVA
(2017)

10,063Jobs in digital tech
(2017)

33,653Digital tech jobs
(2017)

Developments

Glasgow used to play second fiddle to Edinburgh, but no longer, Glasgow’s lower saturation and cost of living have now placed it firmly on the digital tech map. Tech is transforming the city’s traditional industries like oil, gas and finance.

Glasgow is awash with data science activity. The Data Lab Scotland, is funding university places for students in this field and the city hosted DataFest18, a celebration of data-driven innovation. It has been applauded for its focus on the potential positive power of the ethical use of data – from predicting pandemics and childhood obesity to enhancing earthquake response.

Startups continue to engage with, and solve, procurement challenges. One good example is Oxido, which aims to simplify access to and engagement with, official statistics while also facilitating user contributions to these data sets. They are a part of the CivTech initiative run from Edinburgh.

Space tech is taking off. Clyde Space was acquired by Sweden’s AAC Microtec at the end of 2017. Meanwhile, the University of Strathclyde's Space Institute continues to produce outstanding research and successful spin-out businesses.

Steven Calder

Managing Director, Streamba

About Streamba
We’re applying AI driven predictive analytics to connect people, data and decisions in the energy supply chain for maximising realtime global operational efficiency. We’ve called this technology VOR, named after the Norse Goddess of Wisdom, who sees and knows everything.

Why Glasgow?
Our engineering team is based in Glasgow which has an exceptionally strong talent pool, especially for applying machine learning & data science technology. Glasgow is also super friendly and well connected to the Edinburgh startup scene. It’s the home of RookieOven and has great bars and excellent transport access to global cities. We also have a strong presence in Aberdeen and are just branching into Houston, Texas.

National & International focus
We’re fortunate to be backed by Peterson, a technology driven global logistics company. Peterson are a Dutch company, so we’re international by default. Our customers are global energy operators.

Founded: 2011

Popular meetups in Glasgow

1,399 members

The Digital Media Meetup – Glasgow

1,095 members

Glasgow Internet of Things

972 members

Lean Agile Glasgow

Community perceptions survey findings

The Tech Nation 2018 Survey was conducted between January 2018 and February 2018, in partnership with Streetbees. This year’s survey received the largest response yet from members of the UK tech community. In a total of 3,428 submissions, people told us about the opportunities and challenges their local ecosystems face, and the digital tech leaders they admire. The majority of respondents (33%) were founders and CEOs.

What Glasgow startups say is a strength

1Proximity of a university

2Business opportunities

3Access to talent

What Glasgow startups say is a challenge

1Access to funding

2Retaining talent

3Availability of workspace

Who Glasgow startups say is influential

Michael Hayes

Co-founder, Add Jam

About you
Co-founder of Add Jam and RookieOven. With Add Jam we build products on iOS, Android and the Web; with RookieOven we work to create a more vibrant tech community in Glasgow. I was born and educated here and I’m deeply passionate about our tech industry.

Unique to Glasgow?
We benefit from a low cost of living and doing business. While we might not have the same access to finance that other cities benefit from, that means we can do more with less and are better placed to bootstrap businesses.

Strengths & Challenges
Our city produces high quality talent through our Universities, we should continue to focus on retaining that talent in the local ecosystem. It’s all about the people! There’s a prevailing culture in Glasgow of failure being a bad thing, we need to flip that around and create an environment where individuals are given the ability to launch products and services, fail, and start over again.

Tech Nation 2018 is now open!

Great news. All data featured in the 2018 Tech Nation Report is available online for non-commercial use by third parties. The data can be accessed through the data.world platform. If you use the data, please let us know. We would love to showcase your work.

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